After 7 days, the top 30 nominees, ordered by reputation, advance to the primary phase.

Why we consider reputation in case we have more than 30 nominees?

In my opinion, reputation isn't the best measurement to make one user better than another from a moderation perspective. I have a good amount of reputation but there is a lot of users that may become better moderator than me. The minimum amount set to 3000 also confirms that we don't need to have a lot of reputation to be a good moderator.

So if 30 users like me candidate to the election, some good users will have no chance. If I consider the actual election, 4 of the current candidates will be already out (or am I wrong?).

As an alternative why we don't consider the votes on the Questionnaire? It's clear that high upvoted answers means that we generally agree with the user and they will probably become a good moderator. Doing so the "30 users like me" will have no chance to be elected and we will simply consider the top 30 that convinced us the most in the questionnaire.

This is probably not the best alternative but my main concerns is why not considering another way than reputation that is more close to moderation. (meta activity, flagging, reviewing, etc)

As pointed by @Martijn Pieters we have crossed the limit in 2011 and 2015 so there is a good chance to have more than 30 this year.

And this is a problem because we have 6 nominees?
– LuuklagMar 5 '19 at 10:21

1

Historically, votes on the questionnaire have had very little influence on who was voted for in the end. Popularity votes != actual votes, it seems.
– cs95Mar 5 '19 at 10:23

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@Luuklag actually we only have 6 nominees and it's not a problem. I am simply not convinced about this. We will probably never have more than 30.
– Temani AfifMar 5 '19 at 10:23

@coldspeed the questionnaire votes is a personnal alternative and maybe it's not a good one but this still make the use of reputation to pick up the top 30 users not really good for some users who are active on the site but not answering/asking a lot to earn reputation
– Temani AfifMar 5 '19 at 10:26

Mhh, that sentence you've quoted isn't 100% clear to me. Does that really mean that the top 30 are decided by their reputation or just that the top 30 (decided by their actual votes) are then sorted by their reputation, so we know who is candidate 1, 2, 3 .... 30?
– TomMar 5 '19 at 10:30

3

I suspect this limit has never (or very rarely) been hit and was just included as a "just in case it ever comes to that we'll need a predefined procedure" and rep was the most expedient factor, being half of the candidate score after all.
– MagischMar 5 '19 at 10:33

1

@TemaniAfif Has this ever actually come into effect so far? I doubt it. If it happens now then only because someone drew attention to it specifically. Also I doubt you'd be able to round up 10+ very high rep users willing to go through all the work to make a nomination look filed in good faith just to prove a point like that.
– MagischMar 5 '19 at 10:39

5

@Tom CMs have been known to remove joke nominations and nominations filed in bad faith. Simply typing "I'm writing this so I can ban everyone and also force a change on this system I dont like" is more likely then not going to get removed and earn you a mod mail contact.
– MagischMar 5 '19 at 10:47

3

@Magisch: it has been hit, see the 6th election, in 2015 (this was the election I was running in). 2 nominations where cut off and weren't moved to the primaries phase.
– Martijn Pieters♦Mar 5 '19 at 11:41

@Magisch So maybe candidate score is almost as bad as going on rep alone. I apparently have 39/40 yet I'm pretty sure I would make a bad moderator.
– LundinMar 5 '19 at 12:28

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Since there is plenty of evidence that voting rings occur and that they are not always caught is it really a good idea to base elections on something that can be manipulated easily?
– Joe WMar 5 '19 at 13:30

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@JoeW - Any voting ring capable of moving the needle on this scale would be pretty obvious. By nominating yourself for a position like this, you're making yourself extremely visible to moderators. We regularly examine anomalous voting surrounding elections. I'm far more concerned about the many people who have legitimately earned a lot of reputation, but don't fully understand what being a moderator is about.
– Brad Larson♦Mar 5 '19 at 15:42

2

@JoeW That would be way more of a problem with the proposed fix of using votes on the questionnaire. It'll have much fewer votes, so vote fraud done by a single person on a scale low enough to not get caught would have a shot at actually affecting the result. For rep so many votes would be needed over such a long time period to affect it (it'd need to be votes done over the course of weeks or months, rather than a day or two), the odds of not getting caught are much higher. Also the vote patterns on the questionnaire are not going to be normal, so it'd be hard to detect fraud on it.
– ServyMar 5 '19 at 15:46

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The answer to why we do it that way is probably "because that's how it's always been done". Of course, whether we should continue to do it that way is a separate question.
– TylerHMar 5 '19 at 20:15

1 Answer
1

I agree that reputation is not be best metric to use as a cutoff for candidates. I think candidate score is a better first metric for the candidate cutoff.

Why not [consider] another way than reputation that is more close to moderation. (meta activity, flagging, reviewing, etc)

As you noted, reputation as the cutoff metric is not ideal because it doesn't actually describe a user's experience with moderation. Reputation is still important in the candidate score because it does measure site activity and familiarity fairly well. And reputation is necessary for access to community moderation tools like close votes (3k) and viewing deleted questions (10k). But it doesn't measure a user's moderation activities.

Which is where we come to the candidate score. The candidate score is calculated half from reputation and half from moderation-related badges, like ones for flagging and editing. It's a better balance between site usage and moderation-related activities. I'd personally like to see candidate score as the first metric, followed by reputation as a secondary tiebreaker.

[Using the questionnaire score] is probably not the best alternative

I don't think that questionnaire score is an appropriate tiebreaker. For one thing, the questionnaire suffers from all the typical Q&A voting biases, such as the earlier answers getting a foothold on the conversation and getting more voting activity. But more importantly, it weights the opinion of meta too heavily. I'm concerned that using a meta Q&A as the cutoff metric turns Meta into more of a political party, only willing to field candidates that it approves of. I don't think that the Stack Overflow elections were meant to be this way.

"Is meta suppose to be like a political party, only willing to field candidates that it approves of?" No, it's supposed to be like a town hall: a neutral and unbiased place for all parties to have a discussion. Otherwise, agreed with your answer.
– Cody Gray♦Mar 5 '19 at 19:24